You just slipped by the major reason America is hated by the Muslim community as 'reasonable'.

They hate us because of our support of Israel - period. They didn't hate us before we were open military allies for Israel, hated us almost immediately once we were.

That's it. If we roll back every other policy that they find offensive but continue an open and militarily backed support of Israel, the Muslim community will continue to hate the United States.

But for the record, I also find the premise of the article pretty believable. In the end though, I just can't bring myself to care. We have to protect ourselves and the governments of these 'wronged' nations aren't doing anything to help us in that regard. In fact, in many instances they encourage things that are disruptive to our security. As a consequence, we need to protect ourselves at the lowest risk to American lives possible. The drones, right this minute, are that solution.

The only real alternative to the drones or assistance from the opposing governments is to withdraw support of Israel and eventually I think the middle-east will simply cease to care about the US (to the degree necessary for large-scale terrorist action, anyway). I don't see how we can morally take that step, though.

Our support of Israel's a big part of it, especially given what the Muslim world has observed as Israel's movement away from the two-state solution in recent years. Another big part of it is our soldiers that we keep stationed all over the subcontinent, in particular in Saudi Arabia. Another big part of it is our propping up and doing financial dealings with numerous dictators in the region, in some cases empowering those very dictators to slaughter democratic protesters.

But to pretend like firing missiles and dropping bombs on Muslim populations for the near-entirety of the 21st century isn't a serious, serious influence is, well, misguided.

You're creating a false dichotomy when you say the only options America has in the Middle East are (a.) a complete reversal of everything we're doing in the Middle East, and (b.) what we're doing now. You're leaving out a ton of middle ground.

At the end of the day, I would say we need to protect ourselves at the lowest risk of losing American lives while still being respectful of losing other lives as well. The children we've killed in our drone campaign did nothing wrong, at the very, very least.